The Fox From His Lair (book review)

Title: The Fox From His Lair
Author: Elizabeth Cadell

Publication: William Morrow, 1966, hardcover

Genre: Fiction, set in England 

Plot: Annabelle Baird has drifted into an engagement with Philip Ancell, and when she travels to Portugal to be inspected by his employers, their differences become all too evident.  He is annoyed that she brought her nephews, and she is disappointed he does not understand that family comes first with her. 

The Heroes' Welcome (book review)

Title: The Heroes’ Welcome
Author: Louisa Young

Publication: Harper Perennial trade paperback, March 2015
Genre: Historical Fiction, set in 1919 England

 

Plot:  Second in a trilogy, The Heroes’ Welcome follows the stories of two couples whose relationships suffered during WWI and are now challenged by post-war adjustment.  In My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, Nadine Waveney became friendly with poor but relatively honest Riley Purefoy through a painter who teaches Nadine and employs Riley when they are both children.  As Nadine reaches adolescence, her mother decides her friendship with not-our-class Riley should not be encouraged but it is too late, they fall in love.  However, other factors result in Riley joining the army without a word to Nadine or his family and being sent to the trenches.   In France, his superior officer is well bred Peter Locke who married a suitably lovely young woman named Julia.  Riley survives the war long enough to be made an officer (American readers may not understand that it was practically unheard of for an unlisted man to be so elevated but the incredible loss of life in the trenches required a fresh supply of officers) and develops a sort of friendship with Peter before he is severely wounded.  His face is destroyed and he is sent to a hospital on the outskirts of London where the father of plastic surgery, Major/Doctor Harold Gillies, does his best to restore Riley’s health.  Riley’s nurse is Peter’s cousin Rose, for whom war work has provided meaning and self respect previously absent in her life.   Riley breaks off his relationship with Nadine to spare her being tied to a man without a face but, loyal and determined, she eventually tracks him down and convinces him she loves and does not pity him.  

Frognal House was the original building of the Queen's Hospital (later Queen Mary's Hospital), Sidcup where Riley was treated and Rose was a nurse

Where Riley has horrendous physical injuries, Peter returns intact but suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder before such psychological damage is recognized.  His well-intentioned but not very wife suffers most from his deterioration.  The five characters become inextricably connected not simply through the men’s service together in France but when Nadine, visiting the hospital at Sidcup, becomes friendly with Rose and Julia, who live nearby. 

In The Heroes’ Welcome, Nadine and Riley marry, to the distress of her affluent family and his poor one.  This bothers Nadine more than Riley, who has a fairly cold personality.  After some angst, their relationship develops well.  Peter and Julia have a much more difficult time.  Julia is recovering from a bizarre episode in the previous book where she undertook a treatment to preserve her beauty which involved washing her face with acid.  Her husband is indifferent, her three year old son is unnerved by her mood swings, and cousin Rose (the most interesting character) is pursuing an opportunity to become a doctor (although this is underdeveloped).  Rose is the only person who seems to recognize that Peter needs help and is potentially violent, but he is cruel and dismissive to her and basically rapes his wife when he can bring himself to touch her.   Riley has difficulty settling back into post-war life, primarily because his face prevents him from obtaining a job, but he makes some friends and starts a publishing company, aimed at providing helpful information to former soldiers trying to enter civilian life.  As Nadine and Riley’s lives approach normal, Peter becomes more and more psychotic and his relationship with Julia seems doomed to failure.  You must read the book yourself to learn what happens to these five tortured characters.

Audience: Fans of historical and/or Edwardian fiction, those interested in World War I. 

What I liked:  I have avidly read books set during World War I since childhood and had these two on my Goodreads list.  Young does a good job at showing how war changes people and that merely staying alive is not enough -  how difficult it can be for survivors to resume everyday life and the extent to which their families suffer with them.  There is also a great contrast between someone like Peter with invisible wounds, whose family background and finance afford him the luxury of becoming a recluse and drunkard while disfigured Riley is unwilling to be supported by his in-laws and is determined to find honest employment.  Riley seems to be ahead of his time in expecting the government to take a modicum of responsibility for its veterans, not that I disagree.

Fans of Downton Abbey may enjoy this series but I recommend beginning with the first book, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You.  If you are interested in shell-shocked soldiers, you might instead read the beautifully written Regeneration by Pat Barker.  For a look at another unequal (but more joyful) romance between an aristocratic young woman and a working class man, I recommend Kissing Kin by Elswyth Thane. If you simply miss Downton Abbey, try a book from my DA recommended list.

What I disliked: I had mixed feelings about these books.  Of course, I understand that Peter’s guilt at leading men to their deaths has prevented him from resuming a normal post-war life but his vicious behavior to his wife and neglect of his three year old son makes him a very unsympathetic character, and I did not enjoy reading about him.  It is also hard to sympathize with his wife, due to her treatment of their vulnerable son.   I was beginning to dislike Riley as well, but enjoyed the descriptions of his publishing venture.  Nadine and Rose were the most congenial characters, and Rose’s medical studies would have interested me because of my fascination with women's war work.  One hopes this will be covered in the third book.

Source: I received The Heroes’ Welcome from the TLC Book Tours and invite you to visit the tour to read other reviews:

Tuesday, March 10th: Tina Says …
Wednesday, March 11th: Giraffe Days
Thursday, March 12th: Open Book Society
Monday, March 16th: Peppermint PhD
Tuesday, March 17th: Read Her Like an Open Book
Wednesday, March 18th: A Book Geek
Thursday, March 19th: Helen’s Book Blog
Tuesday, March 24th: Ageless Pages Reviews
Wednesday, March 25th: Mom in Love With Fiction
Monday, March 30th: Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews

The Camelot Kids (book review)

Title: The Camelot Kids
Author: Ben Zackheim, @zackheim - Illustrations/design by Nathan Fox, Ian Greenlee

Publication Information: eBook 2014, paperback 2015 (link for purchase).  Crimson Myth Press

Genre: Juvenile Fantasy

Plot:  What would you do if an odd girl in a hooded cloak said, "You know you're a descendant of King Arthur's knight, Lancelot, right?" You'd probably do the same thing 14-year-old orphan Simon Sharp does: back away nice and slow. The difference is Simon's Camelot-obsessed parents recently died under mysterious circumstances.

Night is the Hunter (Book Review)

Title: Night is the Hunter (third is a series featuring Harlan Donnally)
Author: Steven Gore

Publication Information: William Morrow trade paperback, 2015

Genre: Suspense

Plot: When San Francisco Police Detective Harlan Donnally got caught in a rival gang confrontation and took a bullet, the injury forced him into retirement and he now runs a small cafe in Northern California. Now Judge Ray McMullin asks him to look into a 20 year-old case in which the defendant is facing the death penalty, and Donnally soon realizes the case is related to the incident in which he got shot.  While he explores the recollections of those involved and learns that the underlying investigation was flawed, he also becomes consumed with a family issue: whether his father, a well known movie producer, has Alzheimer’s.  As Donnally gets closer to the truth, he becomes afraid that Judge McMullin may similarly be suffering from ominous memory lapses, and wonders whether his current quest for the truth is legitimate and worth pursuing. 

Audience: Fans of suspense, legal thrillers. 

What I liked: This was a fast paced and unusual story with a vast array of characters from judges, police, lawyers, gang members, and long-suffering family members. It explored a little-considered concept: whether judges and lawyers are haunted by the death-row cases they preside over/litigate and what options, if any, are available if they have misgivings about the course of justice. These issues are relevant to everyone affected by the justice system although (unsurprisingly) those who favor the death penalty will likely be unswayed by the varying elements of murder and to what degree a defendant’s actions were deliberate.

Author Steven Gore is a private investigator and his knowledge of the process adds dimension to the story, although Donnally gets a lot more cooperation than I would have expected for someone with no authority to conduct an investigation.  You can visit Gore on Facebook or on his website.

What I disliked: I am a big fan of suspense and even before I was a lawyer, I enjoyed legal thrillers, but I had a hard time keeping the characters and gang members straight.  Donnally himself wasn’t the most engaging of characters. I didn’t care for the sub-plot involving Donnally’s father which seemed very heavy handed. However, maybe it would have made sense or seemed more convincing if I had read the first two books in the series, so I will now go back and try Act of Deceit.

Source: I received Night is the Hunter from the TLC Book Tours and invite you to visit other stops on the tour to read other reviews of this entertaining book.

Winter Woes

Why one should not make a TBR pile on the floor with one's new Robert Goddard books, ordered specially from England:

because when the pipe breaks due to frigid temperatures, those are the first casualties!   I am hoping they will still be readable once they dry out...   Happily, this one is bouncing back after a day on the radiator.  The old laptop from law school that was stored in that bench was not so lucky but can still be recycled.

The room is recovering but I am still traumatized.   I had that "what do you save first when the house is on fire" moment and grabbed the lower shelf of Elswyth Thanes, figuring that long before the time the water rose to the Lovelace or Weber shelves the plumber would arrive (which turned out to be the case).

The Swimmer (Book Review)

Title: The Swimmer
Author: Joakim Zander, @joakimzander

Publication Information: Harper Collins, 2015 (originally published in 2013 in Sweden)

Genre: Suspense

Setting:  Sweden, Syria, Brussels, United States 

Plot: Klara Walldéen, raised in a remote part of Sweden by loving grandparents, studied law at the university in Uppsala, where she fell in love with Mammoud Shammosh, a student with a dark past unknown to her.   He ends their romance when Klara is offered the chance to study at the London School of Economics, and when the story begins Klara is working as a legislative aide in Brussels for the EU Parliament.  When Mammoud comes to Brussels as a successful Ph.D. student to give a lecture, an old acquaintance reveals long-held secret that puts Mammoud in immediate danger.  Once he contacts Klara for help, she is also in risk of her life.   The only person who can help Klara is the American father she never knew.  He gave up all claim to her as a baby but has never stopped checking on her safety from afar.  When the past catches up to the present and he realizes she is in danger, he leaves his long-cherished anonymity to race across the word to her side but will he be in time to save her?

Audience: Fans of suspense; Swedish crime fiction

What I liked: I have not read any Swedish fiction since my childhood devotion to Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren and The Mysterious Schoolmaster books by Karin Anckarsvärd (both of which I recommend), and may be one of the few who never got around to reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  I think that was one of the reasons I was interested in reading this book.   After a very slow start and initial difficulty in keeping the characters’ back stories straight, I found the plot unusual and compelling, although I still had some questions after it ended and thought there were a few too many coincidences.  

Klara is an interesting heroine, raised to hunt and fish (not that such skills better equip someone to flee from masked killers but I suppose it makes one more intrepid) but able to excel in the classroom and appreciative of vintage fashion and obscure music.   I especially liked her loyal friend from law school, Gabriella, about to make partner at a Swedish law firm who has a lot to lose by getting involved in an international scandal, yet doesn’t hesitate to come to Klara’s aid.  Although Klara gets drawn into the intrigue by accident, it is her involvement that makes the book compelling.  The reader might not care about the other figures in this drama.

Source: I received The Swimmer from the TLC Book Tours in return for an honest review, and invite you to visit other stops on the tour to read what others thought of this entertaining book.

Here's the tour schedule:

Tuesday, February 10th: Bibiotica

Wednesday, February 11th: Man of La Book

Friday, February 13th: Dreams, Etc.

Monday, February 16th: My Bookish Ways

Wednesday, February 18th: Jorie Loves a Story

Thursday, February 19th: Annabel & Alice

Friday, February 20th: Kritters Ramblings

Monday, February 23rd: Stephany Writes

Tuesday, February 24th: A Dream Within a Dream

Wednesday, February 25th: Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks

Thursday, February 26th: Ace and Hoser Blook

Monday, March 2nd: The Discerning Reader

Tuesday, March 3rd: Novel Escapes

Thursday, March 5th: From the TBR Pile

Friday, March 6th: Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Wednesday, March 11th: Many Hats

City of Liars and Thieves (Book Review)

Title: City of Liars and Thieves: Love, death and Manhattan's first great murder mystery

Author: Eve Karlin

Publication Information: Alibi ebook, Random House, January 2015

Genre: Historical Fiction, settling 1799 New York

Plot: A crime that rocked a city.  A case that sunned a nation.  Based on the United States' first recorded murder trial, Eve Karlin's debut novel recreates early New York City, where a love affair ends in a brutal murder, told by the victim's cousin, and a conspiracy involving Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr erupts in shattering violence.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart (Book Review)

Title: The Girl with a Clock for a Heart
Author: Peter Swanson

Publication Information: William Morrow, trade paperback, 2014

Genre:  Suspense, set in the US     

Plot: George Foss leads a dull life in Boston and friend-with-benefits-Irene is his only social outlet until Liana Decter reappears in his life unexpectedly.  During his freshman year in college, he fell magically in love with a beautiful young woman who didn’t return after Christmas vacation.  George traveled to her small home town in Florida to find out what had happened and learned she was involved in a murder.  Following his disastrous trip, George returned to college and tried to forget Liana.